Season of Rage: Hugh Burnett and the Struggle for Civil Rights by John Cooper

“One of the last restaurants that kept black people and white people from sitting down together to share a cup of coffee long after laws were passed to stop discrimination was not in the Deep South. It was in the small, sleepy Ontario town of Dresden”. [from back cover]

This book is a history of the slave trade, an examination of the Underground Railroad, and a look at the settlement of a thousand African Americans in southern Ontario. They fled slavery in the deep south but did not escape racism and this book is the story of one man’s campaign to end segregation in his home town.

 ”Hugh Burnett figured that if freedom was worth fighting for on the battlefields of Europe, then it was worth standing up for at home. So when the white owner of a restaurant refused to let him eat there – just because of the color of his skin – Burnett decided to make a stand.” (Prologue, p. 1)